SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS Number 48 September, 1994 Introduction and Notes for a Complete Translation of the Chuang Tzu by Victor H. Mair Victor H. Mair, Editor Sino-Platonic Papers Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305 USA [email protected] www.sino-platonic.org SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS is an occasional series edited by Victor H. Mair. The purpose of the series is to make available to specialists and the interested public the results of research that, because of its unconventional or controversial nature, might otherwise go unpublished. The editor actively encourages younger, not yet well established, scholars and independent authors to submit manuscripts for consideration. Contributions in any of the major scholarly languages of the world, including Romanized Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM) and Japanese, are acceptable. 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N.B.: Beginning with issue no. 171, Sino-Platonic Papers has been published electronically on the Web. Issues from no. 1 to no. 170, however, will continue to be sold as paper copies until our stock runs out, after which they too will be made available on the Web at www.sino-platonic.org. _______________________________________________ Victor H. Mair, "Iatroductionand Notes for a Complete Translation of the Chwng Tzu" Sino-PlatonicPapers, 48 (September, 1994) Preface My complete translation of the Chuang Tw was published by Bantam Books in the late summer of 1994. Because of the nature of that publication, it was impossible for me to include all of the notes and commentary that I had prepared during the course of my work on the text. As with my edition of the Tao Te Ching (Bantam, 1990), however, I promised in the Chuang Tzu (p. liv) that I would issue in Sino-Platonic Papers a separate set of materials designed for those individuals who would like more detailed information on specific points. That is the genesis of this particular volume. In the Bantam Chuang Tzu, I was not able to give any annotations on textual and other types of philological matters. Here, on the other hand, there are hundreds of notes explaining the basis of my readings of difficult passages. Yet, inasmuch as I had originally designed even these notes for the general reader, they are neither as technical nor as complete as I would have made them if they had been meant from the very beginning for a purely scholarly (viz., sinological) audience. The contents of this volume are essentially as I drew them up for submission to Bantam. When I did so, I was fully aware that a protracted process of negotiation with my editors there would result in something quite different. Those who have examined the Bantam edition can see for themselves just how dissimilar that book is from this volume. The only significant changes from the original manuscript that I have made here are in the addition of page numbers and key words to the annotations. It should be mentioned that I had originally designated the various sections of the chapters by letters (A, B, C..., etc.), but my editors at Bantam insisted that these be changed to numbers. Therefore, what I had once referred to as 24K, for example, has now become 24.11. Finally, I had originally designed the book to have numbered footnotes at the bottom of the page. The footnote numbers still exist at the beginning of each note herein, but I have had to add identifying tags in bold, e.g., K'un (3,where the number in parentheses is the page number of the translation published by Bantam. The tag words in bold usually constitute the items that are being explicated, but sometimes they serve merely to locate the section of the text that is relevant to a more general note. The Chuang Tzu is far and away my favorite Chinese book Although this fascinating collection of essays, tales, and anecdotes presents many difficult problems of interpretation, for two decades it has been the work that I wanted more than any other to Victor H. Mair, "Introductionand Notes for a Complete Translation of the Chuang Tzu" Sino-Platonic Papers, 48 (September, 1994) render into English. To prepare myself for the task, I gathered together scores of traditional commentaries and modem exegeses. Although I have consulted them closely and carefully during the course of my research, I seldom refer to them directly in the notes to the translation. The main reason for this is that I view the Chuang Tzu primarily as a work of literature rather than as a work of philosophy and wish to present it to the reading public unencumbered by technical arcana that would distract from the pleasure of encountering one of the most playful and witty books in the world. There have been a few previous translations of the Chuang Tzu into English, French, German, Mandarin, Japanese, and other languages (including several complete ones) although nothing like the hundreds that have been done for the Tao Te Ching, that other well-known Taoist classic. Some of these renditions are quite competent, but I believe that none of them has succeeded in capturing the quintessential spirit of the book. Both the style and the thought of the Chuang Tnr are extraordinary. If we try to approach them by conventional means, we will surely fail. Therefore, in making my translation, I have not been afraid to experiment with new modes of expression to simulate the odd quality of writing in the Chuang Tzu. If my rendering has any other aim than philological accuracy, it is to present Chuang Tzu as a preeminent literary stylist and to rescue him from the clutches of those who would make of him no more than a waffling philosoph or a maudlin minister of the Taoist faith. Before proceeding further, I should be kind enough to explain what the name of the book means and how it should be pronounced. "Chuang" is the surname of the supposed author of this marvelous work and "Tzu" simply implies "master"in the sense of the leader of a given school of thought in ancient China. Hence, we may render "Chuang Tzu" as "Master Chuang." While the pronunciation of the title is not such an easy matter as its meaning, I would console my poor reader who is afraid to attempt it by saying that speakers of Sinitic languages themselves have pronounced (and still do pronounce) the two sinographs used to write it in widely varying ways. For example, a Cantonese would read them, more or less, as tshuhng tzyy and a resident of the Chinese capital 2,600 years ago would have pronounced them roughly as tsyang tsyehg or tsryangh rsyehgh. Therefore, it does not really matter that much how each of us says the title of the book in his or her own idiolect. For those who are fastidious, however, the "conect" pronunciation in Modem Standard Mandarin may be approximated as follows. The "Chu" part of Chuang sounds like the "juu"of juice or jute, except that the "u" functions as a glide to the succeeding vowel and thus comes out as a "w";the "a" must be long, as in Ma and Pa; the "ng" is the same as in English. Perhaps the best way to approximate Tzu is to lop off the initial part of words Victor H. Mair, "Introductionand Notes for a Complete Translation of the Chuang Tzu" Sino-Platonic Papers, 48 (September, 1994) such as adze, fads, and so forth, striving to enunciate only the "d" and the voiced sibilant that comes after it. To end this little lesson in Mandarin phonology, then, we may transcribe Chuang Tzu phonetically as jwa~vngdz or jwahng dzuh. For the meaning and pronunciation of crucial technical terms such as Tao (the Way or the Track) and chti ("vital breathtt)that recur in the Chuang Tzu, see the Afterword to my translation of the Tao Te Ching, pp.